A pile of good books
My recent ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ reads plus all the books I finished lately and Kindle deals for you
Hi friends,
As I write to you from a home surrounded by snow and a temperature of minus-25C, it makes sense to turn towards books this week. We’re in primary “snuggle-up-and-turn-pages-and-drink-tea” season for my fellow Canadians/northern hemisphere dwellers. (I don’t know what the rest of you are doing for reading, I guess on patios? outside? in shorts? who can know? it’s a mystery I am unable to fathom from my cozy bunny hug and wind chill factors.1)
Before we jump into this week’s bookish Field Notes, I wanted to share a couple of things with you. First up, some good news: Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith is officially a national and international bestseller!
Among a few others, we were ranked as bestsellers at The Globe and Mail, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Bookshop.org, Indie Booksellers group, and McNally Robinson (Winnipeg & Saskatoon, I see you! 🫶🏼). My deepest thanks to you all for this honour. This is ours, I know. Thank you for every purchase, every gift to a friend, every review you’ve posted at retailers and/or reader-sites, every post or comment, every kind note of encouragement. ❤️🩹 Thank you for opening your hearts up to this book - and to me, I’m so humbled and grateful.
Second, a very warm welcome to all of our new subscribers! Last week’s essay “I used to belong there. I don’t belong there anymore” resonated with a lot more of us than I would have hoped. As a writer, it’s always nice when the internal things you put to the page resonate with people but in this case, I’m a bit sad that so many of us resonated with it. If you have felt alone at all in that lack-of-belonging feeling, I hope you get a chance to peek into the comment section: clearly you are not alone.
(And for our new folks, don’t forget you now have access to the whole archive of Field Notes here - if you want some direction to get started, here’s my favourite notes of 2023.)
And now: a towering pile of good books
It’s time for the long overdue return of Book Corner! I don’t think we’ve done this properly since August?! I mean, I did share my Favourite Books of 2023 a few months ago but still. It’s been ages since we had a good in-real-time yak about what we’re reading.
"Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the centre of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them." – George Saunders
To loop in our newer subscribers, I usually share what I’ve been reading every few months2 along with an actually honest review, select a favourite (or two) from that stack, and even comb through Amazon Kindle deals to find a few reads worth your time.
I’ll warn you now though: I have been on an incredible reading streak of five-star read after five-star read to start 2024. (I have likely jinxed this now and will show up next time with a womp-womp list of 2-stars but no matter, please enjoy a lot of good books this time around!)